Boss: OK people, we have 136 contents to make today, but there's only 38 newses, 15 entertainments, 7 cat stories and maybe 10 more fluff pieces from the wire.

Journalist: But that's only 70 bits of content!? What do you expect us to do?

Boss: Don't care, get it done

Journalist: What do you want us to do though? Make stuff up? Copy Buzzfeed stories and headlines? Take outage notifications from an ISP and try and sensationalise it into a story? What about a 'news' article which is just literally me typing what I think the weather will be like today (Bonus! Get one piece of content for each main centre)... Maybe you want us to randomly repost comments from earlier articles as a story?

Boss: NOW you're getting it!!!

Journalist: ...

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is very close to what happens...

Boss: OK people, we have 136 contents to make today, but there's only 38 newses, 15 entertainments, 7 cat stories and maybe 10 more fluff pieces from the wire.

Journalist: But that's only 70 bits of content!? What do you expect us to do?

Boss: Don't care, get it done

Journalist: What do you want us to do though? Make stuff up? Copy Buzzfeed stories and headlines? Take outage notifications from an ISP and try and sensationalise it into a story? What about a 'news' article which is just literally me typing what I think the weather will be like today (Bonus! Get one piece of content for each main centre)... Maybe you want us to randomly repost comments from earlier articles as a story?

Boss: NOW you're getting it!!!

Journalist: ...

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is very close to what happens...

I'm guessing that there's one person whose job it to watch the 6:00pm news and re-write any good stories for the next day's paper, another one who looks at overseas news sites and copy/pastes anything interesting into the local content system, then one or two people who scour Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. and search for stories on Apple or Google, and a last person summarises what happened on last night's reality TV shows.

I find stuff.co.nz easier to digest since I have stopped regarding it as a news site and instead treat it as a web-based magazine that carries some news articles.

One big problem with that though, is that you can't easily tell from their links/headlines what is news and what is 'other' stuff. I guess in the end they're a corporate with shareholders, where clicks == advertising revenue so they have little incentive to make it easy to distinguish between the two categories. I find that hovering over a link can give a bit of a clue, if the statusbar reveals that the link points to anything in entertainment or lifestyle sections I tend to move swiftly away.

(Note that this doesn't always work - apparently photoshopping Max Key's hair with John Key's face fits in the politics section ?!?!)

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. (T.S. Eliot)

I find stuff.co.nz easier to digest since I have stopped regarding it as a news site and instead treat it as a web-based magazine that carries some news articles.

One big problem with that though, is that you can't easily tell from their links/headlines what is news and what is 'other' stuff. I guess in the end they're a corporate with shareholders, where clicks == advertising revenue so they have little incentive to make it easy to distinguish between the two categories. I find that hovering over a link can give a bit of a clue, if the statusbar reveals that the link points to anything in entertainment or lifestyle sections I tend to move swiftly away.

(Note that this doesn't always work - apparently photoshopping Max Key's hair with John Key's face fits in the politics section ?!?!)

It ain't that much different than the TV1 or TV3 news at 6pm. In between actual news there's a liberal amount of stupid celebrity gossip, cute fuzzy animal stories and similar crap like that.

I find stuff.co.nz easier to digest since I have stopped regarding it as a news site and instead treat it as a web-based magazine that carries some news articles.

One big problem with that though, is that you can't easily tell from their links/headlines what is news and what is 'other' stuff. I guess in the end they're a corporate with shareholders, where clicks == advertising revenue so they have little incentive to make it easy to distinguish between the two categories. I find that hovering over a link can give a bit of a clue, if the statusbar reveals that the link points to anything in entertainment or lifestyle sections I tend to move swiftly away.

(Note that this doesn't always work - apparently photoshopping Max Key's hair with John Key's face fits in the politics section ?!?!)

It ain't that much different than the TV1 or TV3 news at 6pm. In between actual news there's a liberal amount of stupid celebrity gossip, cute fuzzy animal stories and similar crap like that.

Agreed, I tend to watch the first fifteen or so minutes of TV1 news (usually while I 'm eating my dinner), then I go do something more interesting, like counting the dandelions on the back-lawn (quite challenging now that daylights-savings has finished).

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. (T.S. Eliot)